On September 14, 2019, THE DUKE distillery opened its doors for the second time this year. The summer festival for the 10th anniversary last year and the winter festival that followed in March were so well received that we didn't miss the opportunity to end this summer with a festival again.
And so we once again converted the courtyard of our distillery into a festival area: Our entire product range was offered for tasting in different ways at four different themed bars, from the classic Gin & Tonic, to liqueurs and vodka, to a wide variety of long drink variations. We also had numerous partners with us who supported us with the necessary fillers: Aqua Monaco, BALIS, Eizbach, Fever-Tree Deutschland, GOLDBERG, MAT Craft Lemonade, Red Bull, Schweppes und Thomas Henry were also represented and busy mixing drinks were the boys from Mondino and Salbeyer.
The hungry guests weren't left out either and our friends from Aschheim restaurateurs once again proved what delicacies the local cuisine has to offer. Our neighbors from the Schreiberhof, The Gasthof zur Post nd the Feinkost Café Monsalvy v provided the numerous guests with a variety of culinary delights, from Schupfnudeln with gin-sauerkraut to pulled pork burgers and vegetarian pumpkin-sweet potato curry. TheFontana ce cream parlor opposite even conjured up four different types of gin ice cream, which offered a gintastic dessert and a pleasant way to cool off on this wonderful Bavarian late summer day.
Every half hour our two distillers invited people to take a look behind the brick walls on a distillery tour. Interested visitors were guided through the “holy halls” of production and were able to get a first-hand impression of the production, storage and bottling of our various distillates.
For those who would like to put their skills, strength or brain capacity to the test, we have set up games for young and old. Throwing corks showed who had a good hand and managed to throw our bottle corks into the hanging stone jugs. The same skill and, above all, accuracy was also an advantage when nailing on the chopping block. Juniper guessing required less intuition and more estimation. A few thousand juniper berries filled THE DUKE Gin Magnum bottle and the best three guesses of the exact number each won a Gin & Tonic set.
Extremely popular, especially among the lords of creation, was the “Hau den Lukas”, in which one or the other showed where the “hammer hangs”. But the aim here was not only to demonstrate muscle strength, but also to raise awareness for cheer donations . For every hit with the giant hammer you could throw one euro into the Prostspenden Krug and thus support the Münchner Tafel e.V. Our favorite ice cream supplier, the Tremml Ice Team, also donated for every bag of ice cream and even rounded it up to a generous €50 at the end.
The band From Another Place opened the stage musically with our distiller Andi on bass and woke up sleepy visitors with a good pack of heavy rock.
The Aschheim men's choir followed up with concentrated vocal power and made the festival visitors sway and smile with Bavarian (drinking) songs.
The next band continued Bavarian and the two guys fromHoamatBeat showed that folk also works in dialect. They sweetened the afternoon with spirited indie folk and pop sounds and convinced the listeners with songs that were right on the nerve of the local sound movement.
At dusk, the Big Pack Band entered our backyard stage and brought the atmosphere to its peak with classics from rock, pop and current hits. The first on the dance floor were the tireless, energetic children, before more and more visitors got their dancing legs out from under the tables and moved towards the stage.
We are very happy and would like to thank everyone who made this wonderful festival possible and especially to all of you who came to us in such large numbers!
A big thank you also to Pascal Herliczek, who captured the festival so beautifully in pictures.
we're looking forward to next time!
